Page 31 of The Demon Prince

“Spite?”

“Yes. It’s an emotion. I know you have felt it before. It’s a rather common one with your kind.”

She wasn’t so certain of that. Her mother had said something about spirits feasting upon human emotions, and some of them were as tall as her father. Walking along behind people, feeding off them, like leeches.

This one was very small.

“Ah, yes.” She nodded as though she agreed with what it was saying. “Terrifying indeed. Perhaps you wish to return to Gluttony’s castle?”

“I have no interest in that.”

“But you know quite a bit about him, I assume?”

Were those... eyes in the darkness? It seemed to blink, two orbs of dark grey, rather than black, moving underneath the mass of its shadows. And she swore those must be eyes.

“I know everything about Gluttony,” it replied.

“Hmm.” Without thinking, Katherine bent down and scooped it up. The spirit was very cold, rather like holding icy frog eggs in her hands, but it remained in her arms as she started back toward the town. “I think you and I need to have a little chat, then. Do you think you could tell me everything you know about Gluttony?”

“Will you use it against him?”

“Most likely.”

It shuddered in her arms. “Then I will tell you everything.”

ChapterTwelve

Gluttony had spent far too long getting everything ready. But he didn’t need to sleep like the mortals did, and he’d forgotten how long a few days actually were. He had spent the first entire day picking out her bedroom. There were plenty in his castle, but very few that were good enough.

In fact, he would still argue that none of them were good enough for her, and that was entirely why it had taken him so long to choose. Some of them had views of the garden, and in its day, those would have been the best. After all, that garden had once flourished and been the only color for miles on end that wasn’t some shade of green.

Except, now the garden was dead, and it was a rather morbid sight indeed.

So he obviously couldn’t put her there.

The opposite side of the castle had a beautiful view of the moors, but it was infinitely closer to him. Which he worried about because... well. It was rather obvious. If she was so close to him, how long would it take for him to succumb to the desires that still raged through his chest? He wanted her, and no one else, and he would have her if he could.

So he couldn’t give her the best view, in his opinion. But every other room he looked at was wrong. All of it. The colors, the floor, the age of the items within it. The view. Nothing pleased him so much as the room with the best view of the kingdom.

Somehow, he’d ended up back in that room. Standing in the center of it, feeling the rightness in his chest.

And he’d known there was no other option. He had to make this room the one she stayed in. And though his mind didn’t know why, his soul did. The rest of the evening, and well into the next day, he’d spent cleaning. Making sure everything was absolutely perfect for her.

The room had once been opulent, but everything in his castle had been. Now, he feared it wasn’t up to her standards. He’d had to remove the lovely curtains that hung around the bed. They’d once been a shade of pale pink, gold leaf woven through it as though the gold itself was thread. Unfortunately, age had made the actual fabric threads hang limp and moth-eaten, while the gold had chipped away.

And the fireplace had once worked, but he had to spend hours clearing out multiple birds’ nests within the chimney so she didn’t set herself on fire while she was staying with him.

He’d been covered in soot and grime, and tracked it all across the warm carpets by the time he’d finished. Lighting a fire for himself, he had then carried all the rugs out of the room and threw them into another bedroom he wasn’t using. Then the canopy for the bed. Then the chair that was broken in the corner.

When he returned, the room suddenly appeared very barren. There was only the bed, still covered in dust and mold. A single dresser with a broken leg that leaned to the side, and none of that would do.

So he then spent the next day dragging all the furniture out and replacing it with his own.

Was it a waste of time? Probably. He didn’t even know if she was even going to stay. She might want to return to her town and her own bed. He’d likely follow her there, and she had no way of knowing that, but he would. Gluttony could already feel the obsession getting worse, and he had only scented her blood on that contract.

A contract he’d placed within reach, so whenever the madness clung a little too tightly, he could inhale the scent and ease the torment in his soul.

He was a mad villain, but he was quickly becoming hers.

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